Haggling

Oh man. Having Americans turn to me and ask "Camah zeh?" never gets old. And then I tell them in my perfect English just how much that thing costs. And despite hearing my perfect American accent, they then ask, "And zeh?" or "And does this scarf come in 'yarok?' "
One woman was talking to me in English and turned to her husband in the middle of her sentence and asked, "How do you say 'pink' in Hebrew???" As if I wouldn't understand unless she told me in Hebrew.


I also realized that my fellow Americans have no concept of how and when it's appropriate to haggle. Here's some guidelines:

1) Israel is a modern country, not some crapass middle eastern village from the 19th century.
2) If you're in an actual store, and not a cart or some crowded bazaar or marketplace--don't even try to haggle. It's the equivalent of walking into GAP in LA and demanding a better price on your khaki pants.
3) If you're gonna be an idiot and try to haggle anyway, haggling doesn't consist of whining and saying, "But I don't want to pay that muuuuuch....."
4) Haggling is not whipping out a wallet full of credit cards and ATM cards and shekels and dollars, and then telling the guy at the counter that you only want to pay X-amount because you only have X amount----especially when the store you're at is literally 10 yards away from the central branch of a large international bank that allows you to withdraw money from pretty much any account you could possibly have.
5) And when haggling, don't turn to your friend/partner/husband or whatever and discuss how to go about haggling in English as if we can't understand. I'm American, I understand English perfectly, and the Israelis/South Americans I work with are pretty much fluent as well. On top of that, we were just helping you pick out shirts a couple seconds ago in ENGLISH, so you know damn well that we speak English. You just look like an idiot.
6) Only a total douche would haggle over what is essentially not even a full dollar price difference. Just pay the fucking extra dollar and help support Israeli businesses, you Hamas-supporting douche.

And finally, 7) In general, if you're American.....just don't even try to haggle because we suck at it.